While the city desperately facing the need to adopt water conservation techniques, the Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) has made it mandatory to construct rain water harvesting (RWH) pits to get the building permissions approved in the cantonment area.
The SCB had passed a resolution unanimously, in its board meeting held in January this year, aiming to mitigate the acute water crisis.
On an average, the SCB engineering wing receives 15 to 20 applications in a month for approval of building plans.
Henceforth, a thorough check will be conducted and the approvals will be granted only if the builder is following this RWH rule, an SCB engineering official admitted.
Realising that a plenty of rainwater had gone into drains during the deluge in 2020, SCB officials have rolled out strict measures to implement rainwater harvesting pits.
The fund-starved SCB usually spends 20 to 30 lakh every monsoon season to rejuvenate around 800 defunct power borewells in all SCB wards, due to the drastic dip in groundwater levels.
Though the RWH structures were initiated over a decade ago, there was no data available with the SCB regarding the number of existing and defunct RWH pits. Most of the pits dug up at residential colonies turned out to be garbage bins due to lack of maintenance.
“Out of 370 residential colonies, hardly 70 colonies have followed the concept. Moreover, SCB does not have a technical team to help the people in building the RWH pits. We have to seek help from either the HMWS&SB or private firms,” P Kalyan, resident of Mahendra Hills, told.
“Mahendra Hills is a rocky terrain and chances of rainwater percolation are very less. However, other civilian areas, except for Mahendra Hills, are seeing an increase in groundwater levels every rainy season. There is no other option for us, except to go for RWH pits,” said D Rahul Reddy, another resident of Marredpally area.
Though the RWH structures should have been in place before the arrival of monsoon, the SCB officials claim it is never too late to start a good initiative.
The SCB should also build a rain water harvesting theme park eith